A victim of the contaminated blood scandal with links to Newcastle has slammed the NHS's inability to "learn from its mistakes".
Andrew Bragg, a Newcastle University graduate and chemical engineer who worked for ICI in the North East, suffered a motorcycle crash in Norway in 1986 following his graduation. He underwent extensive surgery in Norway, but following further procedures in the UK - in Blackburn and Liverpool - he contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion.
This was not diagnosed for more than a decade - when Mr Bragg fell ill in India on a work trip and investigation by his employer's occupational health team discovered the cause of this illness was undiagnosed hepatitis. He was then referred to the Freeman Hospital.
Giving evidence at the ongoing Infected Blood Inquiry, Mr Bragg said: "They reconfirmed the diagnosis by PCR and they also did a liver biopsy. So the feedback from that was that I definitely had hepatitis C, that I had fibrosis to the liver. I asked them what the implications was for me and they said, "Well, based on what we have seen, you have probably got five to seven years to live".
"So obviously the next question is 'what treatment are you going to give?' And the answer was: 'None, it is too expensive for the NHS.' He said he was told that, at this stage he was hugely frustrated that there was very little the NHS could do.
He said: "I was then in a dilemma. I couldn't get treatment through the NHS and they wouldn't allow me treatment through any other route, so, you know, presumably I just had to sit there and die. I had some conversations with my MP about it but that didn't lead anywhere."
In a previous statement to the inquiry - which, led by Sir Brian Langstaff is examining the circumstances of the scandal which has led to more than 2,000 deaths - Mr Bragg said that he "was not impressed" by the response which he felt was "inadequate", and that he was told the NHS "did not need to treat me because I had company private medical insurance". But his company medical insurance did not cover hepatitis C.
The contaminated blood scandal saw thousands infected with lethal virus including HIV and hepatitis C by NHS blood products. Many were haemophiliacs, but others - like Mr Bragg - were infected via blood transfusion. Mr Bragg was eventually able to take part in a treatment trial found for him by the Freeman's Professor Margaret Bassendine - and he subsequently cleared the virus.
But he has since then faced serious infections such as sepsis and pneumonia on a regular basis due to the impact treatment and his previous illness had on his immune system. Despite it having been confirmed to him that it was not treatment in Norway that led to his infection, incomplete and destroyed medical records meant Mr Bragg has been repeatedly refused support from the schemes - the Skipton Fund and the English Infected Blood Support Scheme - set up to provide financial aid to scandal victims.
He told the inquiry: "Where did the burden of proof lie? It felt to me that I had to prove myself innocent. Whereas, in the balance of probabilities, that should have been taken- I felt almost like the victim in this.
That, I had contracted this disease and yet there was no sympathetic reception to that. There was no trying to understand the balance of where I might have got it. I can understand the need to look at all the possibilities, but overwhelmingly, for me the probability is that I know where I got it [the hepatitis]. And yet that didn't fall into the review."
He added that, having worked in the chemical industry which is "high hazard" and has "systems and audits in place" to ensure safety, he was surprised by having experienced a lack of this in the NHS - particularly in regard to record-keeping. Mr Bragg said: "It appears to me the NHS does not have that regulatory oversight.
"And it is amazing that something which - they have a very difficult job to do in terms of managing people's health, but equally they have the ability to be detrimental to people's health if they don't do it right - that they are not a learning organisation. Nothing I have seen in my encounters with the NHS would encourage me to think that they learn from their mistakes."
The Infected Blood Inquiry continues to hear evidence and is expected to conclude in early 2023.
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